SINGULAR DEFINITION OF OMNIPOTENCE. 207 omnipotence is "Power to do anything merely physical." What," he asks, "is the very definition of omnipotence ?" and replies that it is "Power to do anything in the world, "anything in the universe; except what contradicts the "MORAL laws that holiness has laid down." Here are two theological terms used, viz., "moral" and "holiness," both employed as usual in that absolute sense that transcends all human consciousness. The separation of moral from physical force, is that division of natural from supernatural power that sacerdotalism revels in, and without which it is unable to move a single step. At page 318, we find "miracles" introduced to support this lecturer's peculiar views respecting omnipotence and conservation of force, and are informed that, 66 "There are instances constantly of God overriding and reversing physical (natural?) laws; but there is not an "instance in the Bible of God overriding, reversing, or dis"pensing with a moral (supernatural or theological ?) "law." In support of this hypothesis is adduced the case of king Nebuchadnezzar's attempt to burn three Jews who were heretics, infidels, and atheists, in relation to the golden theology of his majesty's state church. This, we are told, is an instance of Deity overriding a physical law. But is it really the case? Miracles, or wonderful effects are confessedly superhuman, but not logically supernatural, and still less are they contra-natural. They are simply evidences of a great law, intermitting in its higher manifestations or modes, and in no sense whatever are they proof of any overriding or outraging of natural processes. Nothing is invariable but those conditions of one self-existence that are manifested in their relationship to another self-existence, force and matter. The revelation of this relationship of one self-existence to the other, is derived by the human mind from those uniform processes called laws. Now laws are either manifestations of the energy of Deity, or they are not. If they are not, then natural processes, called by theologians "merely physical laws," may not be wholly divine, but the devil 66 (whoever he may represent) may have had a hand in generating natural force, and this hypothesis is for sacerdotalists to formulate. But if all natural processes, called physical laws as aforesaid, are really and truly manifestations in their several modes of one omnipresent divine energy, it follows that every physical law must be a mode or form of one divine force; so that to override or dispense with a physical, material, or natural process or law, is to override or outrage a divine law; and since all divine law is theologically parenthesized as a moral law, therefore to override or outrage physical law, is to override or dispense with moral law, which is theologically admitted to be impossible. Dr. Cumming contends that there is no instance recorded in the Bible where God has overridden a moral law, such as love God and love your neighbour. To appreciate the proper bearings of this luminous argument, it is necessary to bear in mind that the word "law" has a widely different signification in theological literature to the unvarying sequence of cause and effect phenomenally revealed in natural processes. Sacerdotal law means a declaratory code, implying primitive remedies for offences against its stipulations. Law in theology is the same as that system that obtains in human legislation, and amounts to a covenant between two contracting parties, the governor and the governed; and where the upholder of law and order pursues offenders against his rule with condign punishment, not so much for reformation as for purposes of vengeance, blood for blood, eye for eye, blow for blow, tooth for tooth, life for life. Such law as this is suited for petulant, peevish, infantile intelligences, and there cannot be a doubt that where the community is not fitted for better legislation, they must just quietly submit to its Draconic quality; and this was Moses' task for the Israelites under his tuition, for they were not intelligent enough for any wiser code. But Jesus of Nazareth taught that all theological evil should be ignored, and that sin should be treated as a physician would cure insanity of mind or body, by curative labours, by mutual forbearance, mutual forgiveness of all offences and debts, MODERN COMMENTARY ON THE BIBLE. 209 together with unselfish co-operation in all necessary duties to be done, the sovereign lord or king in social life being in his high office the active and relative servant of the entire community. Dr. Cumming's idea respecting Deity never reversing the law of loving himself, or rendering assistance to his neighbour, has no common sense meaning in it whatever. At page 118 it is admitted that the priest's idea of evil in the universe may be a ridiculous misconcept, for it is said, 66 "We wrangle with providence, complain of our position, dispute about our dfficulties, and think the ways of God are "wrong. It is our ignorance that is dense, our impatience "that is fretful, our ways that are crooked." The lecturer speaks approvingly of Mr. M. F. Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy," doubtless he remembers well the following lines in that extensively circulated work on proverbial small talk. "Man is proud of his mind, boasting that it giveth him divinity (immortality?) 66 "Yet with all its powers it can originate nothing. "Can a man make matter? And yet this would-be God, "thinketh to make mind, and form original idea— "We learn upon a hint, we find upon a clue, we yield an "hundred fold, but the great sower is analogy. "The eye cannot make light, nor the mind make spirit, "Therefore it is wise in man to name all novelty invention, "For it is to find out things that are (self-existent ?) not to "create the unexisting." How little Dr. Cumming understands the poesy of Hebrew, we learn from page 434, where he attempts to solve one of the riddles that abound in the old Hebrew prophets, by speculating in the following style upon a passage from Isaiah, where it is said, "The lion shall eat "straw like an ox." This is the Rev. Lecturer's comment thereon :— 66 "The very dumb brutes will be restored, and be happy, happy as they were in paradise. It is said in prophecy, "the lion shall eat straw like an ox; every animal in P paradise was made graminiverous, and animals were not "made to eat one another." This astounding piece of natural history comes from a member of that theistical school, which jeers and hurls its invectives at the rival church of Rome, for indulging in the same blindly literal rendering of oriental imagery, in asserting that the earth moves around the sun. This erudite parson asserts, that the carnivori were made in anticipation of what would come into the world-the fall, the wreck, the ruin of mankind. The carnivori made in anticipation of the first earthly angel's breach of the conditions of self-existence! There is much talk about reconciling science with sacerdotal religion, but where, in the name of fortune, is the use of propagating such miserable perversion of truth as this? To carry out this extraordinary idea about the restoration of the dumb animals, by making all carnivori give up flesh-eating and turn vegetarians, would exhaust the power of the most imaginative of the human race. Nothing is easier for the rash writers who propose these ricketty theories, than to denounce those who satirize such idle words as scoffers and infidels, because they dare to deny what God has said. The answer is this, that the parsons who pen "stuff" like the foregoing, are responsible for the mischief they make in generating in men's minds a latent, deep, but inexpressible contempt for religion that is founded on theories, which they must know cannot possibly be true, which those who manufacture cannot explain, and moreover confess their total inability to comprehend themselves. 'Conning 'em over to understand them, Although set down habnab at random." By way of carrying on hostilities under cover of a flag of truce, some folks think it a clever dodge to disarm satirical criticism by confessing their misdeeds, which amounts to nothing but an appeal ad misericordiam, to be allowed to continue playing out the farce. As witness this cry of peccavi, at page 342: SACERDOTAL IGNORANCE OF NATURAL LAW. 211 "However little improved may be what I preach now, yet when I look back twenty years upon the notes of "what I then preached, I am amazed that any one listened "with pleasure to the very small talk I then uttered. One "feels growth in one's mind." This is really no apology for present outrages upon sense and decency; it says, in effect, that whereas in verdant youth the preacher indulged in retailing very small talk, he feels growth in his colloquial powers, and in consequence of increased force of voice and improvement in wind, he ventures into the wholesale business and talks big. Once his palaver was very small, now it has grown big; but be that talk very big, or be it only very small, it is lamentably deficient in the spice of common sense; ex. gr., at page 112 we find the doctor confessing his utter inability to comprehend the law of predestination, or pre-ordained generation of the eternal parent, whose word has been predestined by him to become incarnate in a material form or mode of existence in the flux of time. The Essayist says, that he cannot understand how Christians can be called to immortality before they come into the world; and he confesses that he cannot reconcile God's sovereignty with human free will, and sees no use in attempting to do it. Sidropel in despair! The doctor means to say that he cannot reconcile theological assumptions with Biblical statements. He does not see, or won't see, that the assumed knowledge of the absolute is the veil that darkens his perception. He does not see that all revelation in the Bible is conditional, and that this book does not per se supply those mental conditions that alone make its revelation comprehensible. Baron Bunsen says truly, 66 "Divine truth when applied to definite human relations is only true under conditions, and within the limits they “draw around it, but man, by reason of his egotism, is ever striving to get free of all conditions." 66 The assumed knowledge of the absolute and unconditioned, is the basis of all sacerdotal teaching, and since it pretends to teach mysteries, transcending human consciousness, it |